In recent years, more and more people love outdoor and recreational activities such as camping, field trips, or Bar-B-Q during their free time because many people may endure high pressure at work, and have accumulated a lot of tension and stress. Not only can these outdoor activities help people release the stress, but also improve quality of life. Since most places for abovementioned outdoor activities do not have all the facilities, it may be more convenient for people to bring some outdoor furniture such as folding chairs, tables, etc. Thus, making the outdoor furniture light and easy to carry around become important issues for outdoor furniture manufacturers.
For many years, folding chairs are made by wood, however, these wooden folding chairs are usually heavy and lack long-term durability. Also, the wooden chairs are difficult to effectively stack together. Recently, folding chairs usually have metal chair frames that can be bent to desired shapes and coupled with seat pads, and they are generally light weight and portable. When not in use, these folding chairs can be folded and the folded chairs are easily stacked for storage or transportation.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,305,742 to Spendlove at al. discloses a folding chair having a folding mechanism which collapses or folds upon itself to save space, and a safe stopper member for limiting movement of the folding mechanism in the open position to provide a limited opened position, and to resist pinching. FIG. 1a shows the folding chair in a fully open status, and the chair can be folded when front legs and rear legs move towards directions A and A′ respectively. When the front legs and rear legs touch with each other, the folding chair is at a folded status and reaches its minimum volume as shown in FIG. 1b. However, most folding chairs, like the one disclosed by Spendlove, do not provide armrests for the user. So, the user may feel tired or uncomfortable if sitting on the folding chair for a long period of time. Moreover, adding armrests to the folding chair may increase the size thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,540,290 to Liu discloses a folding chair that has toggle joints to engage various elements and to function as fulcrums that allow the elements to fold closely with each other, so the chair can be folded to a compact size as shown in FIGS. 2a and 2b. Moreover, the folding chair has armrests that can be effectively folded as well without significantly increasing the size of the folding chair. However, the folding chair disclosed by Liu may not be stable because when external force is randomly applied to the side frames of the chair, the chair may start to fold and deform.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,758,111 to Chen discloses a folding chair having a supporting backrest and armrests as shown in FIG. 3a. The main purpose of the supporting backrest is to enforce the supporting force of the rear leg rods and prevent them from being deformed by the inwardly stress of the backrest unit, and the entire chair structure would be more stabilized. Even though the chair can be folded in to a compact size as shown in FIG. 3b, it may take some extra steps such as removing the backrest unit and removing the armrests from their original positions, which may be inconvenient and impractical for the user.
Therefore, there remains a need for a new and improved folding chair that is comfortable and stable for the user to sit, and can be easily folded into a compact size to overcome the problems stated above.